Living within your means.

© Stacy Bart 2010

I’m not saying anything new. Everything included in this article has been said, done, tried and tested. I have read numerous books about how to save money, make money, pick stocks and be a frugal tightwad. Most of these authors go on and on about their personal story. These stories are good for inspiring you to believe that you can do this. However, you have to distill the actual steps through pages and pages of prose. I’ve tried countless methods over the last 10 years and found what works for me. This book is something different. I’m going to give you the basic information you need to get started right now.

Here is the big secret, right up front in the beginning!

IN ORDER TO LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS, YOU MUST MAKE MORE MONEY THAN YOU SPEND. OR SPEND LESS MONEY THAN YOU MAKE.

It sounds so simple but how can so many people get this one wrong? It really is that simple. The rest of this book is intended to show you how to succeed at living within your means. The hardest part is to just get started. Write down on a piece of paper “In order to live within your means, you must make more money than you spend. Or spend less money than you make. I will start right now” Do this right now, before you read any further.

Write down everything you spend everyday.

John D. Rockefeller did this his whole life. It really works. “Everything” is the key word here. Don’t leave anything out. You must be honest with yourself if this is going to work. Get a small notebook or memo pad and write down all bills, credit card payments, change in the meter, lunch, dry cleaning, mortgage or rent. I mean everything. Go through your checkbook, credit card statements or bank statements and review them for the last 6 months or year to see if there are any expenses that occur less than monthly such as real estate taxes, car insurance or other semi-annual payments. Divide them so that you can get a monthly average. Look for income too, interest, dividends or other income.

Once you know how much you are spending, you can subtract it from your income and see if you make enough money to cover your expenses. You’ll be surprised at all the little things that add up. It seems that most of the saving money books use Starbucks to make their point, but it’s true. If you are spending $100 a month on coffee that you could make at home and take in a thermos, you can cut your expenses. (Most people know how much they make. If you don’t you’ll need to add that up too! )

Now, select basic categories and divide them into two columns:

Fixed and Variable

Fixed items will include anything you cannot easily change.  Include Mortgage or Rent, Phone, Cable, Internet, Car Payments, Insurance payments, regular tax payments etc.

Variable items will include groceries, gas, restaurants, clothing, movies, and trips to Xmart and Xdepot.

Now add a third column for income. Include your paycheck and any other income you may receive. You either need to exclude your income tax and only write down your net paycheck, or use your gross pay and put your taxes into the fixed column. I recommend including your taxes as an expense.

Add up the expense columns and subtract them from the income and see what your totals are.

If you are computer savvy do this on a spreadsheet. Make columns for the date, description, and one for each of the categories, fixed, variable and income. Every day, enter the information you wrote down in your notebook. At the end of the month, add up the columns and subtract the two expense columns from the income.

You can do the above on a sheet of paper. You don’t need a computer. It’s just easier.

Next, if you do find you are spending more that you make, stop! Again, it sounds easy but this is where YOU REALLY HAVE TO CHANGE YOUR THINKING.

Review your expenses and find ways to cut back.

Start subtracting the unnecessary expenses until you reach below your income. Food, basic clothing, basic transportation and shelter are the only necessities! Many expenses can be cut very easily. Review your fixed expenses and see if you are paying too much for car insurance, phone, Internet or other bills. Next, review your variable expenses. Some will be very obvious like movies, fast food or other frills. Others may take more discipline. If you are receiving a big tax refund at the end of the year, you are giving the government free money. Adjust your withholding so you only get a little bit back at the end of the year. This will help add to the income column.

Defining Need vs. Want
Cable TV is not a necessity. Coffee house coffee is not a necessity. Shopping for clothes is not a necessity. Stay out of the mall and the marts and depots. You must change your thinking here. Advertisers, retail companies and big box stores are very good at persuading you to part with your money for things you really don’t need. There are several industries devoted to the psychology of shopping and how the American consumer makes buying decisions. Warehouse stores a really good at this too.

You know, the big box stores you see advertised in the Sunday paper have the great sale on something you must have at such a great price. Have you noticed that you stop in to these stores to pick up a new dog leash or some picture hangers and wind up spending $60 to $100 at the checkout stand? You didn’t know you were going to buy any of that but you find you need these things and they were on sale. They know how to trick you into buying stuff you don’t need. Stay out of them! Here’s a trick. Throw out the Sunday ads and read the editorial section instead.

Look at what you are paying and not what you are saving when you go out to shop. That last sentence is very important for shopaholics “but I saved 50%” but you spent money on something you don’t need.

Shop with a list. Stick to the list. When you are sure you need something i.e. groceries, look in the pantry, refrigerator and cupboards. Make a list of everything you need. When you get to the grocery store, don’t buy anything that is not on the list. You will find temptation everywhere. The supermarket is as good as the advertisers and big box stores at getting you to buy things you don’t need. Plus, they have an advantage. You may be hungry. They know that and will offer samples at key times during the day. They will also place items next to each other to psychologically trick you. Regular priced tomato sauce is right next to the sale priced spaghetti. Coupons are not worth the time. Buy generic and save more that you would with the coupons. Looking through the coupons will only remind you of things you didn’t know you needed. They are designed to sell you products, not save you money. Catalogues are also very good at separating you from your money. Stop as many of them as you can. I still receive a few but I recycle them as soon as I get them.

Start a price book if you want to be a really good shopper and save money, start a price book for the things you use all the time; Milk, eggs, butter, bread, cereal, frozen dinners etc. These items often go on sale as loss leaders. If you make a small notebook and write down the each item, one per page, list the price, size and where you bought it or saw that price, you will know when items go on sale and whether one market charges more than the others for the same item. Stock up a bit when things are on sale and you will save money at the store.

Make sure you also check the price per oz, many boxes or bottles stay the same size, they just have less in them.

Find ways to entertain yourself and save money too.

Stay home. Go through your closet and find cute and inventive ways to wear what you already have. Buy generic. Learn to cook. You’ll have the time if you stop watching so much TV. Find a great thrift shop. Find your local library and check out one of the books listed under resources. Better yet, check out books on how to better your life. Find something by a good life coach that appeals to you. Anthony Robbins audio books are very motivating. If you have a long commute to work, you have the time. The best ones are always out at the library. Get on the waiting list if necessary. Limiting television will limit your exposure to advertisers. You’ll be amazed at how much you can do without it.

Look for great resources for free entertainment. Take a picnic to a museum on free days. Hit the beach, lake, park or other local attractions. With kids, try a movie exchange with friends. As adults, find ways to entertain at home rather than go to a club or bar. Martini parties, football/basketball games with chips and beer or rent a movie and invite friends over. Get your friends together and each try hosting a different weekend. $20 for easy-to-make appetizers (get recipe ideas on internet cooking sites) and a movie is cheaper than $100 for a night on the town. Make it a game. Some “saving money” books tell you to make a chart with your goals. Reward yourself with something each time you reach a goal. Get the whole family involved. Kids under 12 are really good at this.

While on the subject of kids, be honest with them. Tell them what you are doing and why. I try to avoid the sentence “we can’t afford it” mostly because that’s not true. I usually explain what I’m saving up for. Here’s an example: “Mom, can we stop a McDonalds?” “Not today. I’m trying to save money for our vacation to Florida. If we don’t eat out as much now, we will be able to stay longer at the theme park.” Or use the goal. “Honey, we want to get $1000 in our savings account. When we do, we’ll celebrate with a trip to McDonalds.” This sets a great example, gives your kids confidence in you for being honest and teaches them to save for their goals instead of going into debt. There are so many great lessons here. This works with adults too. If your spouse is a spendthrift or doesn’t know what you are doing, it may put a strain on your relationship. Be honest. Get them involved. If they still don’t want to, give him or her a set amount of cash with no strings attached and include that as an expense. Tell them “here’s $200 for you to spend on the things that you need, but we will not have enough money if you spend more.” This works great for teenagers too. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

Still need more income? Look around you at all the stuff you don’t need. Sell it on Ebay, half.com, a garage sale, Craig’s list or other means.

Learn to do it yourself.

Take a good look at your expenses, are you paying for services you can do yourself? Do you really need to dry clean everything or could you iron those shirts? Rent a rug-doctor and shampoo your own rugs.

Be careful to hire a professional for the things you really should, but don’t be afraid to learn something new. Learn how to fix things yourself. If you’re really not handy, try bartering with a friend.

De-Clutter
De-cluttering your life will help. It’s a psychological thing, but having lots of debris, stuff and junk around you is emotionally stifling. The best way to de-clutter is to completely empty a room. Do this one room at a time so it’s not overwhelming. Look around at the empty room (oh, by the way, now’s a good time to paint or rent a carpet cleaning machine). It should feel really good to start with a clean slate. Imagine what this room should look like. Now, only put back in the room what fits your vision. Do not purchase anything new. Find ways to use what you have. Once the room is done, look at what’s left. Is it useful? Have you worn it, touched it, used it seen it in a year, two, ten? We play a game called keep and toss. Go through everything and throw out what is truly garbage i.e. papers, broken items etc. Put away what you want to keep. If it doesn’t have a home, find one or toss it. Get rid of everything in the toss pile. Sell it at a garage sale, give it to a charity donation or thrift shop, Ebay, gifts to friends or wherever, just out of your house! Be careful of sentimental items. Set aside one trunk, box or small space to store these. If you have more than what fits in that box, you have too much. There are many books on this subject. Watch those “clean up” shows on the home decorating channels. Or get a book about de-cluttering your life. They will inspire you.

Get out of Debt
If one of your expenses is credit card payments and you are not paying all cards off every month, then you need to fix that. Getting out of debt is the best way to cut expenses. Interest every month is the most ridiculous thing to pay. You get nothing for your money. If you want to throw money in the garbage, pay interest.

Debt is very, very bad. We, as American citizens have been duped into believing that some debt is okay. It is not. You are not saving enough on your taxes to make your mortgage interest worth paying. Please read the previous sentence again. If you don’t believe me, do the math yourself. Go back to your truth in lending statement. It’s required for all mortgages nowadays. You can also get this information from your lender. Find the total amount of interest you will pay on this mortgage. It can be as much as twice the amount of the original loan. Now with this information in hand, call your accountant or calculate the totals yourself. Find out exactly how much money you will save on your taxes by claiming the mortgage interest. If you do not itemize, then your total tax benefit is zero. Some financial “gurus” will claim that you can take the cash that you are using to pay off your mortgage early and use it to invest. I have not found an investment that will make me several hundred thousand dollars in the next 10 years (which is the amount I will be saving by paying my mortgage off early). Chances are, you are not a savvy enough investor to make that much on investments. If you were, you wouldn’t need this book.

Credit cards and unsecured debt are the worst. You must get to a point where you don’t pay interest. Buy a good used car or pay off your car and keep it for at least 10 years. It makes more sense to put a little money into your car to keep it running than to spend a fortune on a new one. (Again, advertisers are good at this too).

If you don’t think you can do this, get help. I don’t believe credit counseling services are good for anyone except those who are very near bankruptcy. I found a great source for this help with this problem. Check out Greg Moore and his get out of debt solution. www.debtintowealth.com. If you have more discipline, you can find a great calculator for reducing debt by paying just a bit more on your loans in a specific order. You’ll find many great calculators atwww.dinkytown.com including payoff accelerators, savings, mortgages, and more.

The easiest way to pay off debt is to list your monthly payments in order from smallest to largest. Now, pay the minimum on all payments except the first one. Pay as much as you can on that until it’s paid off. If you have money in a savings account, use that to pay off the smallest loan. When the smallest loan is paid off, take the amount of that former payment and add it to the next one. Chip away at that debt until it’s paid off. Next, take the payments and any extra cash and add it to the third payment. Continue this until you have paid off all your loans. One note about mortgage, I do believe that in today’s economy, it is difficult to buy a decent house without having a mortgage. Just make sure it is a reasonable payment. It should be a payment that you can make without sacrificing the rest of your debts and you should be able to pay extra to pay it off as soon as possible. We have all been fooled into thinking we need a bigger house than we really do.

Start saving money
Once you have accomplished the above, you should begin to have a little extra left over each month. Start putting that money away. Even if you just put your change in a jar at the end of the day, you should put something away. I do believe in contributing to a retirement account, but even if your employer is matching, you must have three months salary in cash in a small savings account before you can do anything else. You can’t touch your 401k or IRA in an emergency. Some books call this “pay yourself first” Get in the habit of putting money away. Start an automatic savings plan in an account that is not so easy to reach. Try http://www.INGdirect.com or something similar. Have a small amount of your paycheck automatically transferred. You will learn to live on the rest.

Get Support
Your friends or family may be influencing your spending. If you are spending, shopping, eating out too often, etc. Look at the reasons. Are you keeping up with the Joneses? Are your friends spendthrifts? Are they in debt too? Are you looking to fill a void in your life? Is it an emotional release? Associate yourself with people who have the same intentions; Living within their means. Talk to your spouse, family and friends and include them in this process. The more support you have, the better.

Find inspiration on the Internet as well. Subscribe to money saving newsletters.www.stretcher.com and www.thefrugallife.com both have great and inspiring newsletters and forums to meet other people who are living within their means. Join in on frugal and money saving forums. Watch out for get-rich-quick schemes. They will never make you money.

Of all the books I read, I have found two of them to be most helpful. The first book is “Your money or your life”. As with any self-help book, you will find points that work for you and those that don’t. Changing your view of money is critical in changing your financial picture. The second is “The tightwad gazette” this one is fun to read from cover to cover. It’s full of great tips and stories to keep you motivated. I don’t rewash plastic Baggies, but I love the pizza dough recipe and it’s written in an easy to read manner.

One last thought; everyone has an opinion, advice, tricks and tips to help you. Pick and choose what works for you. Not everything will be right for everyone. You control your own destiny and financial future. The hardest part is to get started.

Have Network, Will Travel

Four people, one car, several New England states plus NY and DC (I lost count). In 7 days we have traveled 1400 miles, stayed in 4 different hotels and two relatives homes and never been without our network. We have two laptops (one windows 7 one new macbook pro), three iphones, one ipod touch and an another phone with internet capability. We used a Verizon MiFi 2200 for internet, 3g when it's available and local or hotel free networks. Our only technical problem is that we don't have enough power in the car to keep everything charged. With two iPhone chargers, we have to take turns charging.

Okay, so you are probably thinking that we are on vacation and don't need all this technology, and according to one of my kids, we are too plugged in. "No iPhone at dinner, Dad!" We did see lots of wonderful places and spent some great quality time with family and friends. It's been a great trip but thats for a travel blog. Maine is beautiful, took pictures and posted to my facebook. Part of the trip was for a wedding. When we arrived at our hotel, we used chat on facebook to find out what room other family members were in and who had arrived yet. Of course photo's were being posted even as the event was going on. There were long stretches where we didn't use any technology, but the comfort of knowing it was there was nice.

Interestingly enough, we used the plain old iPhone maps and "directions to here" to get everywhere we wanted, even a detour through Philadelphia for cheese steaks. Getting to Pats or Gino's can be a bit dicey. Off topic, we have eaten at both and prefer Pats because it has more topping options. We used it in Boston to follow the Freedom Trail and find restaurants. The iPhone maps worked pretty well for us. Hubby drove while I navigated. I guess if you are driving alone, then you need voice turn by turn but this was more a digital version of the old paper map, but with search functions. 

It's really nice having the network with us, it definitely made our trip easier, but it didn't define it. I'm not nostalgic for the old days without technology. In fact I think we are able to do and see more because we can search for great cheese steak or a good pub. I don't miss having to juggle several maps to travel and we have plenty of adventures and fun. Plus, DH likes being able to deal with all his email and not have 1000 of them on his return. 

Welcome Baby Mac

Ok, I finally did it. I'm posting from our new Macbook Pro. I still really want the iPad but couldn't justify them both. Macbook Pro won. I waited, rather impatiently, only 4 days to get it, checking the fedex tracking number several times a day.

Of course, it's the same mac I was expecting and the out-of-box experience is all I expected from Apple. I quickly set up the user accounts to match my iMac so everyone would be able to use it. Here's where it gets ugly. In a momentary lapse of judgement, I decided to set all three mac's to use Mail and set up gmail as IMAP instead of POP. For those of you who don't know about this, IMAP (as opposed to POP) is the protocol that allows you to use a local mail client like outlook or apple mail or entourage but changes are synchronized to the online gmail account. In English: If I make a change to the local email, ( archive, delete, move to a folder) then it will be the same way on all computers and at gmail.com. Here is what I wasn't planning to do: wait for 20 minutes while Apple Mail downloaded 6342 messages.....on all three computers! Well, I figured there are plenty of messages I could delete. I've had this account for years and never cleaned out the online version. I was using POP before so deleted files were never deleted on gmail's servers. Here is what else I wasn't planning to do: spend more than two hours on gmail cleaning out old emails. I've got it down to a respectable 2714. But there is no way to sort by anything in the online version so I have to search for say "amazon" then it will list all emails from "amazon" and I can select "all" and select "delete". How much fun is that?

Luckily, one of my wine drinking friends came over and saved me.

Sometimes I'm that stupid. (Let's play chase that app)

I upgraded my iPhone 3g to the new iOS4. I know that I cannot have a background or multitasking but I wanted three of the new capabilities.

1. Being able to see all my email inboxes in one place - this in invaluable. It used to to take too many clicks to get from one inbox to another. Now I can see everything in one place. 
2. Zoom on the camera - OK, so the quality of the camera is not that good to start with but a little zoom makes a big difference sometimes.
3. Most important! I loved the idea of having folders for my apps. 9 pages of apps is a lot go to through and I wasn't really good at organizing them. 

Number three sounds good in theory, but that's where the trouble started. In order to put apps together in a folder, you have to hold one of the icons until they all shake, then move on app on top of the other. They will create a folder with the category based on the second app. Ok. I move my blackjack on top of blocks and get a category called games whoo hooo! It worked! Now to add all my games to this folder. But wait, my games are all over the place. When you move an app across more than one page all the other apps move all over the place. It's kind of like trying to catch a goldfish with your bare hands. Forget trying to get an app from page 9 to page 3 where I started the games folder. 

I played this ridiculous game of catch that app for almost 30 minutes and finally said forget it. I pictured Steve Jobs laughing at the world as we all try to wrangle these apps from one page to another. 

Then I remembered that you can organize apps when you connect your phone to the computer. You can move from page to page without all those apps wiggling away. 

Yeah, sometimes I'm that stupid. 

p.s. you can only have 12 apps in a folder. If you try to put more apps in the folder it just wriggles away. 

My Apple flag is not waiving today.

I was one of the multitudes who did not get to pre-order my iphone 4 yesterday. I'm not usually the first in line, but I was very excited about the new phone and figured I would join in on this one. The Apple store signup failed so I went on to the ATT site....fail again. After trying a dozen times over the course of the day, I gave up. The real burn was when they started announcing that all the pre-order phones were sold out. Okay. I can take the hint. I'm not supposed to be first in line. Perhaps I should give up on the upgrade for now, get an ipad and wait until they work out all the kinks. Yeah, I know it's sounds like sour grapes...it is. :P

Coffee and free wifi. I may never go home!

OMG.....Starbucks will be offering free wifi on July 1st. If I ever get my ipad, I will probably move into a Starbucks and never leave. Being the coffee and computer addict that I am, I don't know if this is a good thing.
When I want to hang out at a coffee shop, I usually don't want it to be that busy. I take my ubuntu laptop and surf while I'm killing time until whatever it is that I have to do.  I love the Tuscan Sunrise coffee and tea store in Poway. It's the quintessential coffee shop where the owner is the person behind the counter and she makes really good tea from fresh tea leaves. Her scones are great too. Then there is always Packards in Ramona. Both have free wifi and good coffee. You can also find free wifi at the Ramona Cafe (great breakfast food but their coffee isn't very good.)
However, Starbucks still has the best coffee for my taste. Nice to know I can surf there too. Perhaps it's a good thing that the nearest one is 15 miles from my house. I might never go home, or sleep for that matter.

Communication Overload

Fun surprise in my email this morning. I finally received my invitation to Google Voice. I requested it 6 months ago so I was really excited to be one of the "chosen few."

Now I have mixed feelings. I already have a home phone, way more than 5 email accounts, a cell phone with text, skype, more than 4 instant message services, Mobileme,  Facebook and now Google Voice. Is this too much? I've managed to consolidate all my instant message services into "Adium" on my iMac and "Empathy" on my Ubutnu Laptop. These work great. I can see who is online and chat with anyone on any service from one place, except it looks like I'm on facebook even when I'm not. I've also managed to consolidate all my email accounts. I forward most of them to my gmail so I only check that and mobileme. I chose those two services because I can use them from any computer and they are the best at keeping out the junk mail. They also feed into one inbox on the mac.

I've been in an unclutter mode lately so I'm wondering if adding one more service is a good thing. Will I be able to consolidate everything into one place and will Google be it? I have concerns about privacy but I'm pretty sure there is no real privacy anymore, at least not digitally.

Well, feeling honored that I was finally chosen to receive the illusive Google Voice, I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I will post more as I start to use it and get more acquainted with what it really does. I did get to pick a cool number, though.

More apple fun! iphone 4

I spent two hours at the DMV today only to find out the computer is down and I have to come back. Good thing I had my iphone 3g to keep me occupied. The new iphone 4 was announced today, so I spent my time streaming the marumors.com live from WWDC.

Yep, it looks exactly like the one that was lost by an apple employee and found it's way to gizmodo.com
It's also really neat.

Here are the major points:

• Design is new - steel rim around the edges, smaller but not lighter, longer battery, faster processor, flat back.
• Front and back camera, video conferencing (as far as I can tell both parties have to have iphone 4) imovie functions on 5 megapixel and 720 hd video, with flash. That's a huge improvement over the old one. 
• The new screen is clearer. They call it "retina" but it's really just more pixels in the same space. 
• The new operating system. Of course, you will be able to update a 3GS or 3GS iphone to the new iOS 4 but obviously all the features won't work. It will also work on the ipad, but there a bunch of new cool features.
• Multi tasking is great. I would love to be able to flip to the web to look up something and come right back to where I left off downloading an app or whatever.
• I'm also excited about being able to organize apps into folders. I would like to put all the games in a folder so they don't clutter up the screens. I don't use them that often. Travel would be another good folder.
• Best of all are the new email features. You can view all your email inboxes in one screen. A must for me and my 4 email addresses. Mail will also recognize dates and addresses with integration to your calendar and contacts. 
• Streaming Netflix should be interesting too. 
• No Verizon option....We new that was just a dream.

For you FB junkies, Zynga announced the real Farmville on iphone at the conference. It will be out at the end of the month and you will be able to interact with your FB friends there.

Well that's all I have on the iphone 4 for now. Of course this puts another kink in my plan to get an iPad. I really can't justify both now, can I?

Clutter War

I'm now trying to unclutter my office. I have these visions of a perfect minimalist workspace. You know, the kind you see in magazines and on Lifehacker or Unclutterer.com. All the books are covered in white paper, sparsely placed photos of beautiful black and white photography on nearly empty shelves and an ikea chair and desk with nothing but a white bud vase and perfect flower. But then there is the annoying reality that is my office. I can clean up and put things away and organize. I will finally get it to where it looks like no one lives or works here. Then things just seem to creep in. Files, papers, business cards etc have migrated into my workspace. Right now, there's my coffee cup, of course, and the stack of bills that need to be opened, the stack of stuff to be filed, cleaning spray from my intention to clean as I unclutter, my borrowed label maker and a host of receipts that have found their way to my desk and that little remote that comes with the mac, among other things.

All the websites devoted to organization tell you to break it down into manageable tasks, so here I go.
1. The file drawers: Business Files and Personal Files separated and labeled and purged of old stuff.
2. Take all the photos that line all the shelves and put them in an album. I love my family but I don't really need them staring at me while I work.
3. Put all photo's, printer paper, disks, extraneous cables, memory cards etc in those nice white boxes from ikea.
4. Promise myself I won't let it get out of hand again.....and do it all over in 6 months.

Wish me luck!

PS The suggestion came up about scanning all my documents and storing them on cd, but there is something about keeping the papers that I can't let go of. It seems somewhat time consuming to receive papers, scan them into the computer, organize them into related directories and then remember where I put the cd when I'm looking for something.

iPad envy

I've been an apple fangirl for some time. I love my iMac and  would never go back to a windows computer for two reasons. 1. Viruses and 2. Speed. I have a 24 inch iMac. It's two years old now and just as fast as the day I got it. I also have an old mac mini G4 running tiger. The only problem is that it's too slow to stream youtube or hulu but great for checking email, reading recipes, facebook etc. It sits in the kitchen. In our family, we have 3 iphones, an ipod touch and several versions of nanos no one uses anymore. Yes, I love my Apples.

I have a couple of friends with iPads. I have been playing with them at the apple store too.  Every time I have one in my hands, I love it. I think "this would be really cool." Apple is a master at the emotional response. Pick one up and you'll have a hard time putting it down. Here is the problem. I can't justify buying one yet. I was toying with the idea of getting a macbook pro. I would love to be able to work on websites from anywhere and not be tethered to my desk. I use Rapidweaver for some of my websites and it's a mac only program. If iPad did that, i would have one already. I carry an old dell laptop running the latest Ubuntu OS. It's a bit heavy and the battery life is down to an hour. I can check my email, facebook, surf the web from coffee shops or while waiting for the kids, etc. I can't use Rapidweaver on that either so it's really just a big netbook. Isn't that what iPad is?

I definitely would like to have all the functionality of my iphone in a format that is easier to see. In some ways iPad really is a giant ipod touch, or iphone, but there is more. I love the calendar format. I want that on my big iMac too. The screen size is perfect and it's much thinner when you pick it up than you think it would be. One friend carries it in her purse. It's a really nice book reader and surfing is so intuitive, it's strangely natural, hypnotic almost. I just can't justify it yet. I will resolve myself to envying other peoples ipads...for now.

I'm addicted to Lifehacker

I have igoogle as my home page. I found it's a double edged sword. It allows me to keep a vignette of all the sites I want to see when I log in, but it also serves as a distraction. I feed facebook (of course), google news, local weather, mac rumors a virtual hamster and lifehacker. I scan facebook to see if there is anything new I need to know, then straight to lifehacker. Sometimes I find really useful information about ubuntu or some great site for webdesign tools or a really interesting post for mac software. On the upside, I found a terrific site for free vector icons. Recently I have been sucked into reading the posts that have nothing to do with what I should be working on. How to open a hotel chain lock with a rubberband is not going to help with my latest clients computer dilema, but it was a real eye-opener into how useless those things are.

My first post

Yes, I'm a geek. I admit it. I started this blog to have a place to write about my exploits, research, reviews and opinions on the things I find while surfing. I own and run Ramona Business Consultants www.ramonabusinessconsultants.com Much of what I've learned in my 20+ years as a computer consultant, tech support and web designer is hard won. I've spent countless hours researching trying and testing software, hardware and communications, with much frustration and reward. Hope you find something useful here.