I had something very uncomfortable happen to me on Monday. I had been stressing, just a little, about our cel phone bill. I hadn’t really looked at it recently, wasn’t exactly sure if last month was past-due or not, and knew that it was going feel like it was more than usual because of recent service changes …
Tag: Money
Practicing Slack
There's another key concept from the Scarcity book I'm listening to that is the second “game changer” in terms of how I look at the overall concept of meeting needs. It's the idea of slack. The first thing to realize is that this is nothing to do with the term “slacker”; instead, think about having …
Fighting a Scarcity Mindset
Wow. When I decided, a few weeks ago, that I needed to know more about the general concept of scarcity, I didn’t know where to start. But Scarcity: Why Having So Little Can Mean So Much seemed like a pretty good place. Written by Ivy-League researchers, it promised a broad scope: Drawing on cutting-edge research …
Jar System Update
So, Gray, how’s your attempt to kickstart money management? I’m glad you asked. The first time around I tried using the Jar System virtually – even used a particular budgeting app called Lumen Trails to track the spending. Total failure. Not only was there not enough room for fluctuating expenses in my “necessities” budget, the rest …
A Raw Attempt at Money Management
What comes to mind when you think of that term, “money management”? In a recent coaching session Johnny Ball, the group coach, suggested that I needed to explore better methods of money management. I responded by explaining that I’d tried many budgets and cutting of expenses and such without it affecting my anxiety around money …
The Logical Fallacy of the Futility of Passion
I am not a tremendously logical man. I wish I was; it's probably part of why statistics thrill me so much. It's taken me a while, but there was always something about the whole If you follow your passion, you're very unlikely to be happy or successful because you'll be financially insecure argument. With the …
StashBelt’s Surprising Super Power
I finally feel ready to give a qualified review of my StashBelt. For those who don’t remember, I first heard about it via Nora Dunn, the Professional Hobo. Thanks to her site and a discount code I ordered my own belt. It was a great experience in customer service, and pretty soon I had a …
How to Sleep Better, or, The Economics of Blogging
I mentioned in a past post that I really need to work on my practice of sleeping. Later I got a very friendly email from a bloke named Wally, telling me that he had read the article, liked it, and thought that you (my erstwhile readers) might benefit from a smorgasbord of sleep tips he’d …
The Money Path to a Happy Life
Practical tools to make hard times happier. That's the goal of this blog, and this is one of those rare moments where I feel I can offer some hard evidence for ways to improve the happiness of your life. (That is, as far as the social/psychological studies can be considered to be “hard” evidence of …
don’t just survive; flourish!
With Flourish & Panache… Flourishing means getting on with the things that are important for you to do, exercising your capacities, actively trying to ‘realize’ what you care about and bring it into life… – John Armstrong, How to Worry Less About Money There’s a big reason my new book – the first Love Life …