Posted January 24th, 2010 by Patti
For a chronically disorganized person, I sure am obsessed with organizational paraphernalia. I walk by the back-to-school section and wish I had some reason to shop for school supplies (but not that I actually had to go back to school). I found it fascinating when I was in school, but now there’s so much more variety and it’s as colorful and pretty as it is functional! Send me to a place like The Container Store and it’s like a kid in a candy shop, partly because I will want one of everything and know I will be allowed nothing, partly because I am just that excited about organizational stuff. In the midst of color-coded boxes, bins to hold any-size object, and shelves that could line the walls of my entire house, I find hope. Hope that my chaos can be tamed, that my mess can be sorted out and contained. Hope that my life is manageable.
I feel that if I could just pick out the right set of folders, baskets, cabinets, everything will fall into place and my space will be so visually appealing that I will be inspired to get even more organized. If I can just buy enough tools of the trade, I will magically transform into an organized person. So imagine my surprise, when the organizational expert author of a book I was reading on just that subject, suggested that this may be exactly the opposite of the strategy I need to pursue.
In Organization From The Inside Out, Julie Morgenstern notes that many people try to start here. But, she says that not only is this an external solution to an internal problem, but it may also be counterproductive. She suggests that you first examine what things are going on inside you that lead to a lack of organization. Then you examine your physical space and make a plan. She says that many people start by going out and spending a lot of money on some fancy organizational system, come home all excited, are disappointed to find that it does not meet the needs of their space, are frustrated once again by their difficulty with becoming organized, and give up. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted August 30th, 2009 by Patti
I guess I’m more of a sentimental person than I realized. I had to say goodbye to my car this week.* This was my first new car, the first car I actually got to pick the color, the first one I paid for myself, and the first car Josh and I bought together as a couple just a few months after we were married. I remember spending all day at car dealerships on Labor Day 2002 and closing out the night with the Mitsubishi crew as we bargained on the price and thumbed through the paperwork. As we drove away feeling the crisp late summer night air through our oh-so-cool moon roof, we were both a little daunted by the enormity of our first big purchase and it’s price tag.
This was also the first car I was responsible for maintaining. My dad had done such a great job of taking car of my cars up to this point, I didn’t even have a clue what needed done and when. The first time I got the oil changed I ended up with a bill over fifty dollars. I learned a lesson then. Don’t let those guys talk you into buying anything extra, especially on a brand new car. I was so new at all this and just wanted to take good care of my possession.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted May 25th, 2009 by admin
This is just a quickie post. I found a cool site called feedflix. This site tracks your actual ussage of your netflix account to show if you are getting your value out of it. Considering only 10% of the users of Netflix are spending less per movie/show view than me I think we must be doing ok. If you are intersted here is the link for feedflix. www.feedflix.com
Posted May 25th, 2009 by admin
Since February Patti and I have been going through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. We have come a long way but still have a long way to go. One thing had going in our favor was that our 2003 Mitsubishi Lancer was paid off. Even though it was over 160,000 miles it was running well and I was just getting ready to put $1000 into it to keep it running as my daily driver. Then in early April I had a bit of an accident.
On my way a client meeting in Northern Kentucky I smashed my wonderful little paid of car into a concrete highway divider while avoiding a wall of cars that decided to stop out of the blue. I walked away clean but my car was pretty cracked up. I was able to get it home then began the mess of figuring out what Insurance was going to do.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted May 11th, 2009 by admin
Ok, it’s personal confession time…I am lazy. I think we all have to fight against laziness, but I seem to have a special tendency toward burying my head in the sand and doing nothing. Maybe it is exacerbated by my lack of indulging in many other popular vices, but it has always been a temptation for me to literally and figuratively crawl in bed, shield myself from the outside world with my comfy blanket, and obliterate my conscious woes. Because it seems easier to do nothing and because I tend to get overwhelmed easily and have no clue what to do or where to start, I have found myself just trying to ignore many issues in my life and letting my lazy side take control. Guess what, the world went on around me and my problems just got more complex. Nothing got solved and what’s worse, while chaos ensued I didn’t even get satisfaction from my laziness. Doing nothing feels horrible when you know there is real work to be done.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted February 3rd, 2009 by admin
Tonight we started the Financial Peace iTeam at Crosslink. Being part of this group really excites me for a lot of reasons. The first is that Patti and I have been talking about reading Dame Ramsey’s book and now we have to as part of the curriculum. The bigger and more important reason is that we have been making good strides with our finances for years. But good doesn’t quite cut it. I quick run through of the our financial situation using the Dave Ramsey Quick Reality Check showed us that at our current rate we would retire at 65 with $723,118 in the bank. While I can tell you that we are not very far down this path with only about a $100 in savings currently I can see how we could conceivably save that amount by the time we are 65. Keep in mind that number most likely wont account for putting two boys through college or adopting a child in need of a family.
Then there is what we could potentially have at 65 if we start Dave Ramseys Plan and stick to it. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted January 21st, 2009 by admin
So this past week Patti and I made a big decision. We decided it was time that we take on our finances. Prior to being married were were both really good with money. She lived on her own for a year on a very tight budget and planning our wedding and during that same time I live a very comfortable bachelors life and in less than six months saved over $7000.00 for our honeymoon to the Virgin Islands. To our credit at that young age we had avoided the Credit Card and debt spiral. Then we got married.
Things got interesting then. The short side of it was I managed money in a very unstructured way and her in a very structured way and when they didn’t mesh we simple quit really managing our money. One day there was money for Steak and Lobster the next we were scrounging for money for a pizza. Fast forward to today and here is what our finances look like. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted December 28th, 2008 by admin
So if you are checking out our little site at all you might have noticed that I added a “Things to Do Page”. Patti and I have been talking and while we clearly understand that structure and order are what we need in our lives and our home, we don’t always quite know how to get there. So as we were wrapping up our cleaning of the Kitchen and Living room for Christmas (and hopefully for longer) we decided post Christmas we were going to implement “Chore Lists” That got me thinking and I have decided that to go along with our other sytems we are putting in place I am going to go list crazy. The cool thing is I found a plugin for WordPress (this website) that lets me build the lists like the one on “Things to Do Page”. So you can look forward to lots of future lists on this site. Some of these are going to be daily, weekly or monthly list but others like the “Things to Do Page”, will be goals that we do and move on from (hopefully).
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted December 18th, 2008 by admin
We just got home from our trip to Grand Rapids about 30 minutes ago. As I posted earlier I had to run up there for some training and planning meetings. Just before we got home we made a quick pact that we would unpack the car and put everything up tonight! I know that seems small but for us it is not. We tend to unpack the car from trips willy nilly and much of that lands in our foyer until we do a full scrub of the house again. Well tonight it is done and that is another small success. The goal is to chain a bunch of small successes together and allow them to offset any tiny failures we may encounter.
So cheers to us. I guess I earned the Fosters I had a dinner 
Posted December 17th, 2008 by admin
Well only kinda. I travel off and on for work. Much more off than on these days. But last night Patti and I loaded up the kids and left Columbus, Ohio for Grand Rapids, Michigan for a two day training session that I had to attend at our corporate office. I am always reimbursed for my food, millage and my lodging while I am on company business but for a few days of traveling I often incur around $400 or more on my credit card. My company gets me the money back quickly and logic would have it that I would pay that money right back onto my credit card, including any “extra” that is left from the millage. However this is not really what usually happens. Read the rest of this entry »
