Dog Vacay #Review

If you haven't noticed, the sharing economy is kind of turning into a big deal. The classic example is AirBnb, a service which lets travelers stay at someone's home instead of at a hotel. The idea is to make better use of resources that already exist. Why build another hotel when there are already vacant rooms in existing homes? If everything goes to plan, the visitor gets a nicer room and/or better pricing, and the host gets to earn some money off an unused room. Or, you can go the altruistic route and use CouchSurfing which doesn't charge anyone money. I haven't used AirBnB or CouchSurfing yet, but someday I would like to (I need to actually travel first).

Another big area in the sharing economy is transportation. Think about all the cars on the roads with a single driver... all headed in the same direction. Then think about all the homes with cars sitting in the driveway. There MUST be a better way to allocate these resources. The utopian view is a society with less cars, generating less pollution, decreasing road congestion, and yet remaining convenient. Companies like Getaround, Uber, and SideCar are each tackling this space. I would LOVE to use these services, but alas, I don't live in a big city where these services operate.

If you haven't figured it out by now, this is a space I've been watching. I love that it's a way to better allocate resources, and for someone to generate a little bit of fun money on the side.

Enter DogVacay.

What is DogVacay?
DogVacay is a website, which they call a community, that helps connect dog owners to care for each other's pets. Instead of leaving your dog at the vet's or a boarding house, your dog can stay at someone else's home. Think "AirBnb for pets".


How Does It Work?
You visit dogvacay.com and search for homes in your area. When you select one, you'll see a profile like mine pictured above. You can check their calendar, see where they're located, send a message, and make a reservation. The host gets to choose the rate and accept/decline reservations. I must admit though, that I'm horrible about keeping up on my busy/free days.


How Much Does It Cost?
It's free to join and list your place (here's my listing). The only cost to the customer is the amount the host charges ($20/day/pet for me). Then DogVacay charges the host 15% of the income. 15% is pretty reasonable when you consider Apple charges their developers 30%.


Great, But Does It Actually Work?
Yes. After 3 almost-bookings (like I said, I'm bad at keeping my availability up-to-date) we recently had our first booking. We had 2 dogs visit us for the day while the owners went off on a trip to Portland. It was so much fun! Vinnie and the dogs played pretty much all day. They ran around the house and chased each other in the backyard a bunch. A few days later DogVacay sent us a check in the mail. Easy. We were a little nervous at first about opening up our home to strange animals, but it turned out to be a great experience.

A Few Other Observations

• I'm glad that we got to ease into it by booking for only a single day. I think I could do multiple days now.
• We noticed after looking through some other listings that you don't have to own a pet to host other pets. Actually, that might even be better. (?)
• You might be tempted to try and save 15% by making side deals, but I really think it makes sense to play within the online system. First, you get their insurance coverage and customer support. Second, actually having bookings helps you rank higher in their results, helping you earn more.
• I got an email from DogVacay requesting I email some photos to the owners (by simply replying to the email). I did it, but don't actually know if they got it. Perhaps this feature works better over multiple days. (?)
• The message system works pretty well. In each of my interactions, it started with a message before making a reservation. I think people using this service are looking for someone they can trust.
• I like profiles with lots of pictures and a medium-length description. I don't know if that correlates to a better host, but that's who I tend to be attracted to. It also helps to be the only one in your city (like I am).
• Since I don't travel much and, again, I'm the only one in my city. I haven't left Vinnie with anyone yet, but if someone joined near-by, I would definitely give it a go.

Recommendation
Should you try it? Definitely. Setting up a profile is easy and hosting dogs is fun. Depending on where you live, don't expect to be inundated with requests, but you will get a few. In general, I support the sharing economy. I think it's a great way to use resources you already own and provide value back to society.

Is Being Debt Free Financial Insanity?

I saw a tweet recently by Robert Kiyosaki and wanted to comment on it. Here's the tweet:

Being debt free is financial insanity. GOOD debt is the key to wealth building.
— Robert Kiyosaki (@theRealKiyosaki) January 19, 2013

My first reaction: If being debt free is financial insanity, what about someone who has BAD debt? OK. OK. That isn't fair. I realize he only had 140 characters and wanted to grab people's attention. If he had more than 140 characters, here's what I think he would say.

Of course BAD debt is... well... bad. We should strive as much as possible to get out of BAD debt. That's a given. Yes, doing that is much harder than saying it, but this isn't even the purpose of his tweet.

Kiyosaki is claiming that if you want to build wealth, being debt free won't do it (it's insane). I get the impression this is a dig towards Dave Ramsey who really pushes for people to become debt free.

In the end, balance is key.

First, you must spend less than you earn to build any sort of wealth. BUT, you can't spend so little that you're miserable. Start here: experiment by changing one of your regular habits: make coffee at home, switch to a smaller cable package, or ride your bike to work.

Second, you should strive to pay off BAD debt. BUT, you don't want to neglect having an emergency fund and potentially put yourself in a worse situation when life happens. Start here: tackle high interest credit cards. Then roll that payment to other debt. If you have a lot of debt, it's OK if it takes a few years to pay it all off.

Third, you should invest in assets and leverage those assets with debt. BUT, you should not leverage yourself to the point that you can't make payments when life happens and the assets don't produce as much as you want. Start here: stock market index funds are great because you buy companies that have GOOD debt (excluding a handful of tech stocks that have no debt), and are managing that debt well. You're personally debt free, and take advantage of organizations that have GOOD debt.

Will that build wealth super fast? No, but it'll work over the time of your career. The best way to speed up the process is to figure out how to improve the world and start doing that. That might be in the form of a side business, or increased responsibilities at your primary job. Either way, if you make the world better, you will be rewarded. Instead of increasing your standard of living, you can buy more assets and build wealth faster.

Being debt free isn't insane. It's a safe and proven path to building wealth. Though, it does take longer than leveraging yourself and it may mean you never get to drive fancy cars or go on exotic vacations.

Using GOOD debt within reason, also builds wealth. Though it does mean you'll have to actively manage something/someone and is riskier if you don't have the skills/time to do a good job.

What we do

Our current strategy is to spend less than we earn and use the extra money to get out of all our consumer debt (including student loans) as soon as possible. Then we'll focus on buying assets that are leveraged with debt (I like actively managing our assets). Then we'll let those assets pay their own debt down. Eventually, it'll make sense to pay off our GOOD debt too. That point in time will be when our assets, if they were debt free, will be able to sustain our standard of living. Technically, we won't be maximizing our potential wealth, but we're trying to find a balance between building wealth fast and risk.

UPDATE
I had a friend make a comment on Facebook I thought worth sharing:
"I think it would be helpful to specify that Good debt is debt that allows you to make more money by utilizing it's power in situations where you would others wise have no power to purchase said capital. Like buying a multi-unit property, where you don't have the capital to purchase it outright but make the Good debt work for you!"

Image: bfpublishing.com

2013 Goals: Focus!

As promised, here are my 2013 goals for the year. I actually started writing this post 3 times earlier and just couldn't focus my thoughts.  If this is any indicator, focusing this year is going to be a challenge. It's going to involve a lot of no's, but I said "no" today to something, am feeling good about it, and so I'm riding that success. 4th time's the charm!

1. Read all Bible reading plan Assignments
Told you this one would be back. I made it a 3rd of the way last year and want to make it another 3rd this year. I have a strategy I know works and I'm going to keep at it.

By the way, I'm using the Bible iPhone app by YouVersion (iTunes). In addition to a bunch of translations it also has a bunch of reading plans to choose from.


2. Increase my income this year
Last year I focused on the expenses side of our budget. This year I want to focus on the income side. This is a lot tougher of a goal and the reason why I'm choosing to focus only on this. In previous years, I've wanted this, but did a shot gun approach with a little bit of everything. I grew a lot, learned a lot, added a little bit of value, and now it's time to focus and add a lot more value.

Jessi informed me recently that I need to clarify what I mean when I say, "I want to increase my income." It's not a "I want more money" statement. Instead, it's the external measurement of something much more important: Value being provided by either making or doing something people want. How do you measure "value provided"? In the business world it's often by the amount people are willing to pay you. So if you provide more value, you will get paid more for it. It may not be instant, but it will happen over time.

So when I say, "I want to increase my income". I'm saying, "I want to add more value to the world, and my measurement of success is the amount of income I earn." I don't want to coast through 2013. Instead, I want to purposefully challenge my personal status quo and make a big impact on the lives around me. With that in mind, here are a my areas of focus (Yes, 3 is "focusing" for me):

• I want to double down on my contributions for HP by looking for places to contribute even more. This is the place I believe I can make the biggest impact for the world. That might mean expanding my current role or finding a new one. I've come to a point in the last few months that I'm ready to take on more and contribute at a higher level for HP. Thankfully, the people within HP are awesome at helping someone like me grow.

• Monetize the Furlo Bros Tech Podcast. I've thought a lot about this, and I think I finally have a way to monetize that I, and our listeners, would like. I don't have any details to share now, especially since I only recently suggested it to my brother, but I think it'll be good if we can pull it off. We're also addressing the feedback we get most: "I like listening, but it's too long". Starting the beginning of this year we're breaking the full show into shorter clips. I've finally automated the post processing to a point that adding additional clips is reasonable on my time. Hopefully this will help the podcast appeal to a lot more people. The point of monetizing isn't really to increase my income, but rather to further justify spending a few hours hanging out with my brother and buy a couple gadgets to review. :)

• Jessi and I spend a lot of time working with tenants, church members, and friends on their finances, and we believe there is a broader opportunity to help people improve their financial situation. I'm not talking about complex investment strategies (though that is fun to talk about), but rather foundational strategies like spending less than you earn, and getting out of credit card debt. Lots of blogs and programs already exist, but for many reasons people aren't taking advantage of them. We think we have a way to effectively reach part of that "unreached" segment of the population. It's still in the very early stages, but we definitely think there's something of value we can provide. This is totally a spare-time project that might be a significant contributor to our income in the future. Right now we're focused on making a valuable product.

So that's it. Hopefully you can see I'm trying to be more focused, and also a lot more in-depth than compared to previous years. There are smaller goals, like paying off another student loan and flossing daily, but those goals will take care of themselves since it's all automated or part of my normal routine.

Personal Finance Reporting

I wanted to dive a little deeper into one of my 2012 goals: Spending Less in 2012 than in 2011. I spent some time putting this together and I'd like to share it.

First, I track everything using Mint.com. I link all my accounts (except one loan company who doesn't want to play nice). Mint automatically pulls all my transactions in and adds labels. I find the labels are correct 90% of the time, so I go through my transactions twice a month just to make sure they're right. Mint also has a budget section which I use for all of our expected expenses. That way if something is wrong, I'll know about it (for example, once the garbage company didn't charge me and I got it resolved before it was a messy issue). I also get alerts when there's high spending or I get a fee (which seems to happen too often) so I can take care of it right away.

If you're not signed up for Mint, stop reading and sign up. Knowing how you're spending your money is a powerful way (the only way?) to get control of your finances. For most people, that will be enough.

And then there are people like me.

Once a month I take all the aggregated spending information from Mint and put it into my own spreadsheet. Personally, I use something similar to what Robert Kiyosaki uses in his game Cash Flow. It just makes intuitive sense to me. Here's what one of the character sheets looks like:

It's pretty easy. Income on top, expenses on the bottom. Subtract the 2 to get your monthly cash flow. Then you list your Assets and Liabilities. The difference between those 2 is your net worth. Hopefully that one goes up over time. Clearly, this example is very simplified.

I use Mint's labels for my expenses (plus a couple of my own labels I made). I also have 2 columns for using cash (well... checking/debit) and credit. Here's what it looks like (Yes, I changed every single number - I wish it actually looked like this).

I also have a statement from the previous year so I can compare how I did. I also have one that gives me year-to-date totals so I can see how I'm tracking.

Of course, Jessi sees this and freaks out. So I made a summary chart for her. Yes, I purposely removed the axis, but the lines are real. The faded lines are 2011. As you'll see, at the end of 2011, our cumulative net income dropped below the zero line. We didn't spend less than we earned. Hence my goal to spend less in 2012.

Jessi can look at this and instantly know how we did. A couple interesting points (in my opinion):

• Our spending is pretty low, except for a few months where we have BIG expenses. May was the Prius, October was the Jackson property. The only reason September was high was because of inspections and appraisals.
• There are a couple times during the year when our income peaks. One is during tax time (we spent so much last year, it was unusually high in March this year. Another is at the end when HP is doling out bonuses. The spike in August is when I sold the truck.
• Had we not bought the Jackson property, we would have stayed above zero the entire year. We'll see if we can make that happen this year. :)
• I love charts like this. I could stare at it for hours. I need to make more of these this year!

So that's how I do the reporting on our personal finances. That's how I know, to the penny, what the differences in spending are from year to year. You don't need to get this detailed - Mint already does a lot - but you sure learn a lot if you get this detailed.

2012 Goals Review

It's time to look back at my previous year's goals and see how I did. Here's what I said originally, and now let's dive in.

My mantra for the year was to "work diligently, wait patiently". I did work diligently most of the time, but I must admit I got impatient near the end of the year on some of these goals.


1. Read all Bible reading plan assignments
Done! I used the Bible app on my iPhone and stayed on top of it. Basically, I would listen to an assignment when driving or washing dishes. It worked great and I really liked it. I'm going to keep this going for the next 2 years and get completely through the Bible.


2. Manage 1 other property
Done! I already wrote about the property we bought in October. This wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I set this goal, but I'll take the win.


3. Decide the fate of Univera: Fly or Die
Done... but not the result I wanted. My criteria for staying on this was to find > 10 new customers. I built a sweet online tool (in my opinion) and started promoting. I gained about 1,000 visitors a month, but never got any takers. I also tried calling leads, but also got no takers. I might share more of my experience later, we'll see... I still love Univera's products and will be a customer for life. I'll also remain an associate if someone expresses interest in the business, but I won't be actively working on it like I did last year.


4. Spend less money than last year
So... We didn't buy multiple Jeeps, but we did buy a Prius. Technically we spent $1,855 more this year than last year, but I would argue the money was better spent. For example, we paid an extra $4,449 towards student loans, we also spent money buying another property & car (which halved our monthly fuel costs, saving $1,010 last year). Some areas we saved money were $1,392 on travel and $12,314 on our Columbus property by refinancing and only doing one major project.

If you're like me, you're shocked by these super high numbers too... it's amazing what 12 months of spending adds up to! In the end, we also increased our income (despite what happened with Univera) and ended the year with more savings than when we started. In all, I'm happy with the direction.


5. Run 10 miles in <= 100 minutes
Done! It was glorious. I did it in 95 minutes. Jessi and I don't have any plans for running a half marathon this year, but I'll keep running on occasion.


6. Transition Bob the Autographer fully online
I set aside time to do this, but never got around to it. I suppose it's safe to say it actually wasn't too important to me. Ultimately, it was fun and I'm ready to fully move on from this. You'll learn more about why I didn't do this when I share my 2013 goals.


7. Teach Vinnie 3 new skills
I wanted Vinnie to learn 3 tricks: "Come", "Stay" and "Lay down". Vinnie is awesome at "come": 100% inside and about 80% outside. I would like him to "stay" longer than he does, but I'm happy with it for now. I never really got him to master the whole "lay down" trick, but I did teach him to spin in a circle and go outside to the bathroom on command.


Overall, I'm happy with my 2012 accomplishments. I did a whole bunch and feel like I'm in a better place today because I reached these goals. Stay tuned for my 2013 goals.

Is It Worth Buying A Manufactured Home?

In December Jessi and I considered buying a manufactured home to live in. It would be a temporary home that would enable us to shovel more cash at our student loans. The price was listed at $30,000 which meant we could potentially save a bunch of money due to small payments. We ultimately decided not to pursue that specific deal, but I learned a lot about manufactured homes in the process.


What Is A Manufactured Home?
A picture is worth a thousand words. Here's a classic one:

A couple things to note in this picture:

• See the vertical paneling around the bottom? That's called a skirt. Almost all of them have this. Sometimes it's brick, but 99% of the time it's wood. That's the crawl space. It's like having an above-ground pool.
• Notice how close all the other homes are? This is also fairly typical. Often developers will build a bunch inside a "park" and then people rent spaces (think of it as an HOA - more on this later). I know this picture is in a park because of the address: "H35". That's the unit number.
• They tend be smaller in size, though they do make "double wides" which are two halves put together (see the top picture).
• See the other home to the right? Notice they're adding a section. Yep, they can be expanded just like any other home.
• Not shown here is a carport or garage. Garages aren't as common, but they can be added.
• Finally, the shape is often a rectangle. That's because they need to fit on a truck trailer and cruise down the highway. Perhaps you've passed one of those "wide loads" before.

Manufactured homes are also called mobile homes, but I would argue that after 1976, they stopped being mobile homes. You see, in 1976 manufactured homes became HUD-approved. That means they have to be built with the same standard quality as stick-built homes. Today, manufactured homes are only mobile in the sense that they're moved after they're constructed. Before 1976, they were the cheap trailers often depicted in movies. That "cheap" stigma still remains. But today, sitting inside of one, you wouldn't be able to tell that it's manufactured. I'll go deeper into this in the Appreciation section.



Modular
Can you tell this is a modular home?

Yeah, me neither. Here's a picture of one being put together:

Unlike manufactured homes, these are designed to look like a classic stick-built home. A foundation is built in place, and the the modules of the building are set on top. These have all the benefits of manufactured homes (more later), and few of the detractors... Except price, these actually tend to be the most expensive of all the options.


Stick-Built Homes
This is the type of house most of us live in. These homes are built on-site. Another thousand words:

So, manufactured homes are like boxed-up versions of stick-built homes. They have all the components of a regular home, but tend to be smaller and have a fairly standard look. Modular homes are the tweaner: They're made to look like stick-built homes, but are constructed off-site at a manufacturing plant.


Do Manufactured Homes Appreciate In Value?
Since we were planning on buying short-term, I actually cared about this question (normally I don't care since I focus on cash-flow and holding long-term). It turns out the answer is complicated.

As I stated earlier, homes built after 1976 have to follow all the same standards as stick-built homes. So the initial quality is just as good, if not better than stick built homes. Here are some of the benefits:

Benefits Of A Manufactured Home

• The buildings are manufactured inside, in a moisture/temperature/machine controlled environment. This often produces better quality - also a perk of modular homes.
• They're designed to travel at 55mph down a freeway. So all the braces are stronger and everything is tightly integrated.
• When buying new, you can literally design you're home by walking through examples and piecing together all the components.
• Plus, when buying new, you get a warrantee where the manufacturer will fix anything and everything. From what I learned, this is a pretty awesome perk.

Wow! That's sounds great! So what's up with the "complicated" answer and the pervasive thought that they're not as high quality?

Manufactured Homes Are Cheaper
Part of the stigma is that the homes are cheaper. Surely something that costs $30,000 can't be as high quality as something that costs $300,000. Maybe...

• First, the buildings are smaller. Less material = less cost.
• They're made assembly-style. You don't have to hire an appraiser, or draw up plans. The only added cost is transportation. Standardization = less cost.
• If you buy in a park, you're not buying land. No land = less cost.

Here's the bottom line: IF you buy a manufactured home after 1976, it was at least in compliance when it was built. If you're like Jessi and I, having a smaller place is preferred. IF the dwelling was maintained properly, it will appreciate in value along with the rest of the market. If homes go up 5%, your manufactured home will go up 5% too. But 5% of $30K is only $1,500 which seems like nothing compared to $15,000 for the $300K home.

Furthermore, people tend to buy manufactured homes because they can't afford stick-built homes. As a result, they also tend to not be able to afford proper maintenance once the warrantee ends. So, IF you don't maintain the dwelling, the value will depreciate, fast. Stick-built fixer-upper homes can get away with selling at a decent price because of the land - it appreciates because no more is being made. As Lex Luther would say, "It's all about the land, Superman."


Can You Get a Home Loan For Manufactured Homes?
IF you buy the land in addition to a manufactured home, you can get a home loan. If you're buying in a park, you cannot. Instead, you need to get something similar to a car loan. It'll feel like qualifying for a home loan, but it'll be a different type of loan. Not all lenders deal with manufactured loans. We had to find someone special for our deal.

Obviously, banks like lending on new manufactured homes, and become more strict with used homes. If it's new, you can get a 20-year loan. As the home gets older, the length of the loan gets shorter - all the way down to 5 years. After the dwelling is older than 20 years old, the bank will not lend on it (the place we looked at, turned 21 this January).

So the price might be cheap, but the terms of the loan might make it such that you're still paying a hefty payment (though you will pay it off faster, so that's nice).

Manufactured Parks
I specifically wanted to call out manufactured parks since most of the ones I see are in parks. Think of these parks as closed-gate communities with an HOA (home owners association) you pay rent to. The difference is that it's a single owner of the land you're paying to. That rent includes a space and could also include water, garbage, and lawn care. Lots of times they also have age restrictions, like 55+ communities, and pet restrictions. In the Corvallis-Albany area rents are in the $400 to $500 range, with regular annual increases. If you're going to have a loan the entire time living there, it might actually cost you more cash each month relative to just renting.


Final Thoughts
My goal was to buy a cheap place, live in it while we paid off our student loans and then re-sell it to re-coup my equity. So over the entire time, my only cost would be interest, taxes and utilities. Once I learned about the park rent and that they're difficult to re-sell because of the financing barriers, I became less interested. Especially since we don't have a ton of cash right now since it's going towards student loans, so I can't afford to pay $30K up front.

If we were going to stay for the long-term (30+ years) and I had the cash, I would definitely look into buying one. Ideally, I'd like to find something that includes land for a garden and our dog. I mean, if I'm going to be paying an extra $400, it might as well be towards a mortgage. Then, I wouldn't care about appreciation/depreciation because that's not the reason why I bought it.

Top Posts Of 2012

I'm a total sucker for all those end of year reviews and lists. The Furlo Bros Tech Podcast this week had to split into 2 parts because Matthew and I got totally engrossed in it. I thought I'd keep the fun going with one last post this year doing a round-up of my most popular posts. I'll start with the most popular, and then finish with the "least popular" of the popular group.


Apple's iPad Mini will compete on price NEXT year
This is easily my most popular post of all time. The trick, it appears, is to get mentioned in another popular tech blog. This also goosed a bunch of previous posts and a couple follow-up posts. In the post, I explain Apple's pricing strategy.


Harbor Freight Tools Heavy Duty Foldable Utility Trailer
I attribute the popularity of this post to good SEO (the title is nothing but keywords), and a relative lack of good posts on the trailer in general. I knew it was a "big deal" when a friend from church called me because he was looking for a trailer and my post was the first search result. That's got to be worth at least 10 Internet points.


Are You Sure You Have A Strategy?
At the beginning of the year I got on a business marketing/strategy kick. I shared some general concepts I learned in school, and that I still use today to evaluate business ideas (for myself, and the podcast).


PC vs Tablet Shipments: Fun With Data
My brother and I got into a debate during one of our podcasts about whether the iPad is a "PC" or a "Tablet". I decided to dive into the data to see if purchases were replacements, or additions to their computing life. I enjoy using this blog to form my thoughts for the podcast.


Made To Stick [Book Review]
The best business book I read this year. The book talks about making ideas stick. It really is excellent. In the post I summarize what I learned.


Mortgage Payments Once A Month Or Every Other Week?
Because I'm a math geek, I like to create mini-spreadsheets to answer analytical questions. In this post I was trying to figure out if we should change up the frequency of our mortgage payments.


How To Do a SWOT Analysis
A title like that is guaranteed to be popular. What marketing person doesn't want to know how a SWOT analysis works? Of course, it could also be my Back To The Future hover board reference.


First World iPad Problems [Twitter+Flicker Mash-up]
I only did one of these, but given its popularity I should do more. The problem I had was coming up with appropriate photos.


Why I Quit Netflix
There are days when I miss Netflix. But then I think about all the time I got back to write blog posts and do other fun activities.

iCopter Christmas Present

Today I wanted to share a video of one of the Christmas presents I received. I've been doing some experimenting with video editing for another project and have been looking for an excuse to make a personal video. My Aunt Ruth gave me an iCopter for Christmas which had the potential for a cool video. So I made one thanking her for the present.

This is one of those "explaining" types of videos. The goal is for you to understand how the helicopter flies, not just a highlight reel of cool tricks.

Merry Christmas Ya Filthy Animal

Jessi & I wish you a very Merry Christmas!

We've been enjoying some fun holiday movies this year in an attempt to create some sort of Christmas Movie Tradition. It's been awesome!

Here's what we have on the list:

• Home Alone (1 & 2)
• "I took a shower washing every body part with actual soap; including all my major crevices; including inbetween my toes and in my belly button, which I never did before but sort of enjoyed. I washed my hair with adult formula shampoo and used cream rinse for that just-washed shine. I can't seem to find my toothbrush, so I'll pick one up when I go out today. Other than that, I'm in good shape."

• Elf
• "Buddy the Elf, what's your favorite color?"

• It's A Wonderful Life
• "Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"

• Miracle on 34th Street (1994 version)
• "We invite you to ask yourself this one simple question: Do you believe in Santa Claus?"

• The Muppet Christmas Carol
• "Come in, and know me better, man! Did I already say that?"

I originally wanted to include Christmas Vacation, because there are some hilarious lines: "Oh, Eddie... If I woke up tomorrow with my head sewn to the carpet, I wouldn't be more surprised than I am now."  But it just didn't make the list.

We hope your travels are safe and you get to spend some quality time with your family. See you next year!

I Am Addicted To Endorphins

According to Wikipedia (significantly paraphrased):

Endorphins are produced during exercise, excitement, pain, consumption of spicy food, love and orgasm, and they produce analgesia and a feeling of well-being. It consists of two parts: endo- and -orphin; these are short forms of the words endogenous and morphine, intended to mean "a morphine-like substance originating from within the body." The term "endorphin rush" has been adopted in popular speech to refer to feelings of exhilaration brought on by pain, danger, or other forms of stress, supposedly due to the influence of endorphins.
A publicized effect of endorphin production is the so-called "runner's high", which is said to occur when strenuous exercise takes a person over a threshold that activates endorphin production. Endorphins are released during long, continuous workouts, when the level of intensity is between moderate and high, and breathing is difficult. Runner's high has also been known to create feelings of euphoria and happiness.

When I hurt myself, I stopped working out. I literally sat on a couch and watched movies. It wasn't until last weekend that my hand actually felt good enough that I thought I could go on a short run.

And I needed to!

You see, I'm addicted to endorphins. I get exactly what Wikipedia describes when I work out: happiness (some call it optimistic). But here's the deal, I tend to workout a lot, so I tend to always have a steady stream of endorphins. Like coffee drinkers, it means that I only really feel the effect when I STOP working out.

Which is exactly what happened.

My observation has been that the effect takes a week or so to wear off. Then slowly, my attitude and mood becomes more and more gloomy, to the point that I start arguing over small things (it tends to sneak up on me). As a kid, I remember times when I would get angry with my parents, and getting into a massive argument about something stupid. Suddenly, my parents would realize what was going on, and require me to go on a run. By the time I got back, life would be fine again. It's almost like magic.

This last week I experienced the same thing. My mood really took a dive and I began questioning all sorts of decisions and plans we have - mostly thinking they were horrible. Not surprisingly, Jessi wasn't expecting that and we might have exchanged some words over it. Like I said, it sneaks up on me - I normally don't realize it until it's too late.

Then I watched the Brian Williams interview of Tim Cook. In the interview, Cook said that he hits the gym every day at 5am to workout. For him it's a way to stay in shape and relieve stress. Here's a guy who's running the most valuable company in the world, and somehow he's figured out how to make time to exercise. If he can do it, so can I! And that was when it hit me that it's been a while since I worked out.

3 miles later, life is good again. I'm excited for our plans again, though I think I revealed some real risks
we'll need to handle, but now I think we can actually handle them! I also feel good about getting up early and getting a fast start to the day (literally).

So, I'm addicted to endorphins, and it's great!

Lessons From Getting Injured

Since my power tool accident, I've had some time to think about the lessons I've learned. I'd like to share them.

Always wear gloves when working
This saved me from a VERY serious accident.

The cost of short-cuts
I took a short cut with my tool to save time and money. I knew I was taking a risk and wasn't using the machine the way it was designed, but I wanted to finish fast. I made speed a priority instead of safety. What I should have done was buy a belt sander and replace my broken orbital sander. In the end, what seemed like a short cut, ended up costing me much more. Time-wise: this sets us back WEEKS instead of the hour to go buy a new tool. This will also cost us HUNDREDS financially since we won't be able to move out when we want to (see the next point).

I know this lesson (don't take short cuts), and have applied it effectively many times. But it got the better of me in this moment because I let my priorities get out of balance. I think the same principle applies to other habits: speeding in your car, eating fast food, and drinking caffeine. Sure, we can get away with these short-cuts for a while, but at what inevitable cost? Besides, my experience is that I really don't "save" very much when I do take the short-cut.

I also want to re-evaluate other short-cuts in my life. I found myself asking the following questions: Am I'm skimping too much on my relationships? My financial generosity? My time reading the Bible and praying? Reading books? This injury has really brought my priorities and choices back into focus. I don't have answers for these, but it served as a great reminder to not take short-cuts, no matter how innocuous it seems.

Make Plans, but be flexible
We had plans: Refinish the cabinets over Thanksgiving. Make other repairs during Christmas. Move out and finish repairs in January. Then teach a finance class and prepare for a Mexico Mission trip. We knew it was a tight timeline, and now it's impossible. As a result, of my injury we now won't move out until after March. I won't lie: It's frustrating, but I'm working on being flexible and creating new plans to guide us. The act of creating plans isn't bad. As a matter of fact, I highly encourage it since it serves as a road map. However, it's also important to remain flexible, realize plans do change, and be OK with it. I'm still working on the "be OK with it" part.

Jessi is awesome
Not only did she tie my shoes, cut my food, and do all sorts of other daily tasks for me. BUT she also continued working on the cabinets while I sat on the couch watching James Bond movies! The entire time she kept a positive attitude. She would even build me up because I felt like a total loser for getting hurt. I am blessed beyond belief!

I am mortal
I turned 29 in October. It wasn't that big of a deal. I don't feel older, and most importantly all my annual medical tests indicate I'm actually healthier than last year. One can't help but feel immortal when his vital signs actually improve!

But now...
Staring at a scar I earned in less than a second...
Wondering if I'll ever get my full hand strength back...
I know I'm going to die.

I know that I'm inside a fragile body, and that I'm not really immortal. More importantly, I FEEL like I'm not immortal. You know how they say young people feel immortal? I fully acknowledge I was in that camp. I was proud to be in that camp. And now I'm no longer in that camp. It's horrible.

I'm sure that eventually my hand will fully heal, and I'll slowly forget about my mortality, but I hope I don't. I hope I remember that I am fragile, that I need to be safe, and I also need to make the most of each day, with no short-cuts, so that I have no regrets when my final day comes.

I Got Into A Fight With A Power Tool

I'm back!

Well... Kind of...

Warning: if you're slightly squeamish, close this now.

Over the Thanksgiving break Jessi & I decided to refinish our cabinets. Progress was going well. Then, our sander started acting weird. I took the machine apart and figured out the problem: the main bearing had worn out (this is the part that allows the sanding pad to spin freely). As a result the screw holding everything together had wiggled loose. This caused, not too surprisingly, the machine to (1) make a weird sound, (2) wobble uncontrollably and (3) soon stop working.

I figured out a way to stick the screw in, and keep it really tight. Unfortunately, the side effect was the pad no long spun freely - instead it spun at the same speed as the motor (aka. really fast!). Of course, the other side effect was it really took the paint off. What was taking a hour to do, suddenly only took 10 minutes.

I used the modified sander for a while and completely finished the first pass on the inside. Then I moved on to get the doors. At this point, we were ahead of schedule, usually a fantasy when it comes to projects.

And then I slipped up.

At 4:15pm, I used my right hand to rotate one of the doors while still sanding with the other hand. I lost control of the sander and in flash the sander bit my right hand. I dropped the sander, and tore off my glove. I instantly knew it wasn't good. I then realized the sander was still spinning like crazy on the ground. I managed to turn it off while not further hurting myself. Then headed indoors to get help from Jessi.

Since she's a teacher, she's a trained first responder. It still didn't stop her from slightly freaking out when I surprised her with a bloody hand. :)

We went to the doctor's office and they cleaned out the wound. I guess there was a ton of dirt, rock, and dried paint in there. I could also see my tendon moving around when I wiggled my finger. The one thing I did right was wear gloves. Had I not done that, it would have hit my tendon and I would put me into surgery with a much longer recovery period.

Enough writing. Onto the pictures.

While driving to the doctor's office. See the dirt?

 Washing it. The danger is that the wound is right next to a joint. If it's not cleaned out, it could cause major problems.

Here it is. It's not huge, but pretty deep, and in a bad place.

Thanks Doc! There are 4 other stitches inside that's connecting the muscle together.

Healing up

Looking better, but still really swollen.

Top 4 stitches are out. Now the bottom 4 stitches will disintegrate in a few weeks.

I took this today. There's still a ways to go, but at least I can do computer work again.

So, I've gained enough strength that I can type again. But, I still can't make a fist or grab objects. Plus, at the end of the day my whole right hand is sore. It'll probably be until the start of 2013 until I have full use of my hand back.

I'm Thankful For...

Well. I'm sitting here as a gimp, not able to use my right hand, because of an accident while re-finishing some cabinets. More on that later (with pictures & video). For today, I wanted to share what we're thankful for.


James

• First, I'm thankful for my iPhone. I can do all sorts of things on it one handed, including type a blog post.
• My job. I love being able to work from home and complete projects at my own pace.
• My family. Jessi has been a particularly big blessing in my gimp-like state. And she's willing to do construction projects and discuss business ideas. Vinnie is wonderful too. I'm so thankful that he loves to cuddle.

Jessi

• A warm, dry place to sleep in. Her eyes were recently opened to how hard it can be to live homeless. With our recent rain storm she kept thinking about how thankful she is to have a dry place to sleep in.
• Family. Me, because I show her how to be positive and am constantly looking for ways to improve. Vinnie, because he makes her laugh and shows her how to enjoy life & not stress out.
• Capable of being able to work. Seeing my frustration of not being able do much of anything and knowing there are some people who are physically incapacitated their whole lives. Jessi is so thankful to be able to do anything, physically, she wants.
• Thankful for our duplexes. It's an opportunity to serve others & earn some extra income.

Vinnie

• For parents who love him. We know this because he waggles his tail whenever he sees us.
• Heaters. When I push the heater buttons he comes running.
• Dog treats & peanut butter. We can get him to do all sorts of tricks if food is the reward.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Google Updates Blogger iPhone App

Well... I was looking for something to talk about today. And Google throws me a bone with an app update.

So, I'm writing this post on my iPhone. Typing seems to be fine, but I'm a little weary about not being able to include inline images. I "attached" one, but what does that mean on a blog? I guess I'll hit publish and find out.

I would also like the ability to see previous tags/categories I've made. Being able to post my location is cool, but I think I'd prefer the ability to schedule when it's published instead.

Ah man, listen to me. All I want is the desktop experience on my phone. How sad is that! Perhaps I'll stick to Twitter & Instagram while on the road and reserve posts for when I'm at home. What does that say about the post-PC era?

And for the fun of it, I've now "attached" two images. Crazy

Buy Assets That Put Money In Your Pocket

Robert Kiyosaki recently tweeted out a couple thoughts I felt were worth repeating. The first one said this:

Making more money is only helpful if you use the money you make to purchase cash-flowing assets that in turn help you make more money.
— Robert Kiyosaki (@theRealKiyosaki) November 5, 2012

It's a little extreme to say it's "only helpful", but I tend to agree that buying assets is the best use of your money after you take care of your basic living needs. I'm sure we all have different definitions of basic living needs, but that's not the point. The question is what should you do with your extra money at the end of the month? Kiyosaki's recommendation is to purchase assets.

Note: If you still have consumer debt you're paying off, you don't have any extra money because it should all be going towards that. That's our current situation with student loans, though not technically consumer debt, the interest rates are now high enough it makes sense to tackle them.

So what is an asset?

Asset can be anything as long as it has value, produces income or appreciates, and has a ready market. Assets put money IN your pocket.
— Robert Kiyosaki (@theRealKiyosaki) November 7, 2012

Got it. Assets are anything that puts money in your pocket. Here are some examples:

Businesses (via stocks or wholly owned): Assets
Royalties (such as from a book): Assets
Rental Property: Assets

Your home: not an asset
A car: not an asset
Video games: not an asset

I want to be clear: I'm not saying non-assets, also called liabilities, are bad. Believe me, we love our dog despite his financial liability. The goal should be to purchase these liabilities with assets. That's what we did with our dog. You're probably doing it too.

If you think about it, that's what you're doing when you save for retirement: buying assets in the form of stocks so that one day you can live off that asset. Unfortunately, many people save so little that it takes them until they're 65 or older to accumulate enough assets to pay for their level of living.

If we could learn to enjoy life on less, it would create a double benefit: We would be able to save more because we're spending less, and we wouldn't need to accumulate as many assets because the costs it needs to cover would be less.

Kiyosaki's plea is to stop buying liabilities and personal effects that you don't really need. You don't need to get radical and make huge changes. Instead, he wants you to simply be more purposeful with your spending and focus on buying assets. He says so in a Facebook update:

The good news is that you don't have to start your own business to find success. Keep your job, but start buying real assets, not liabilities or personal effects that have no real value once you get them home.

So that's my encouragement today. Try some experiments on living with less. Keep it fun. And then invest the money you saved into assets. Start with funding your retirement account and then expand from there.

Image: PatrickandMonica.net

Old Shirt, New Shirt, Red Shirt, Blue Shirt...

The Idea

James isn't much of a collector, in fact he loves getting rid of things. We even just took another load of stuff to St. Vinnie's yesterday!


That being said, he was going through his clothes one afternoon and had a HUGE stack of shirts he was going to get rid of. I, in my most pack-rattish tone, said "What are you doing with those? You can't just toss them! I could use them for something!" So, I of course put them in my craft room and held onto them for about two years waiting for just the right opportunity.



The Opportunity

I don't exactly remember how the opportunity came up to turn that pile of old sports, clubs, business, mission trips and souvenir shirts into a quilt...but what I do remember was thinking..."oh yeah, that's a great idea...it will be easy."

Famous last words. It is all about perspective when quilting. To an experienced quilter, someone who has spent numerous hours measuring, pinning, cutting, re-pinning, sewing, cutting some more and loosing track of time because they are so  into their project, a t-shirt quilt is easy. However, I learned very quickly that deciding to use all 108 shirts to make the grand-daddy of all t-shirt quilts was just a bit more than I could handle as a novice, no, as a non-quilter.

The Process

Sewing together t-shirt material is an art form. T-shirts are stretchy, which is great when you're wearing them and horrible when you're sewing them. So, step one is to fuse (iron on) a stabilizer to the back of each piece you will be using.

All of the designs cut out and placed

Had I read the directions that my awesome experienced-quilter-mother-in-law had shared with me I would have known that fusing THEN cutting makes your life easier. I however, in all my quilting wisdom cut each piece and then proceeded to fuse each piece and yes, RE-CUT every piece again. At this point I was thinking, "This is step 1?"

Well, I made it through the hard part, so I thought. I was super excited to start sewing things together so I called my mother-in-law and said I was bringing down the pieces on my next visit to put it together. Of course I was very
surprised to find out that you had to have things like "precise measurements" and "same sized blocks" and in order to get there you had to use a "fabric ruler" and "rotary cutter" neither of which I had.

The back laid out and ready to sew

Thank goodness for Dawn, she helped me make a plan and cut and get things in order and she gave me all the tools I would need to be successful.

So, I went back home with a mission. I was going to get all the blocks pieced together for the front and back (Oh, yeah, I added that little step of quilting the backside as well as the topside...am I nuts?!) before the next visit so we really could start sewing that time.

The back sewn together

I put in a lot of man hours sewing small pieces together to make the larger blocks. I did math in my head and math on the white board and cut and re-cut, so many times that I needed a vacation from my craft time. But, I did it. I got every block finished and packed for our trip down during Christmas last year.

Exhausted after a long sewing session

My mother-in-law was so excited to finally get started on the sewing she did what she always does and double checked  the measurements. Much to my horror each piece was off by about 1/4-1/2 of an inch. Come to find out one of the rulers I had been using was warped and off by about 1/4-1/2 of an inch.

At this point I was pretty sure the quilt was a goner. Had it been up to me I probably would have forced the issue and just started sewing the thing and hoped and prayed that when I got finished no one would notice the crooked seams or lopsided edges. Dawn, the experienced quilter, said..."That's ok, we can just trim them all to match." Oh, such a simple statement. She proceeded to trim each block...all 149 of them to be exactly the right size. Without her help I never would have made it past this step! Thank you, Mom!

Vinnie "helping" me tie the quilt

Once they were all the right size the sewing actually was pretty fast. We got most of the strips put together that week. I finished putting the strips together once I got home. Then on her next visit up Dawn helped me spray the top and bottom with fabric  glue and stick them to the batting to hold them in place for tying. I decided to tie my quilt since I don't have a big enough machine to do any actual quilting through all the layers.

I turned on some CSI and tied until my finger tips couldn't tie anymore. Then (I know the mind reals that there could be more!) I watched a couple you-tube videos about binding the edge. It took about four 2 hour sessions of Olympic highlight videos to get around the whole thing but I remember that last stitch... I felt like one of the athletes I had been watching...accomplished, trained, practiced, I had put my mind to it and finished and I had gotten the gold, well at least I had gotten a finished quilt and had gotten to be poured into by my mother-in-law about a skill and passion that she adored. That was reward enough.

We love our t-shirt quilt. I think Vinnie loves it most of all. And we will have the memories both from the shirts and making the quilt for a very long time.

The Finished Product

Vinnie Enjoying "his" quilt

Up-cycle

Editor and Guest Contributor
James and I were chatting the other day about our blog and how he is the main contributor. I do play an editing role on most of the posts but every once in a while I like to make a contribution that is all my own. Today is just the day for such a post.

I have had the past few days off from work since it was time for teacher conferences. I am very blessed to work just less than full time as a reading assistant and I get to enjoy the freedom from other full time teaching responsibilities such as conferences, parent phone calls, maintaining a classroom (complete with cleaning, decorating and prepping for lessons).

That being said, I have still had to transition back into the working life after my summer vacation, I know, I know rough life, so I really do appreciate the days off when they come.

I love to do many artistic and craft related things in my free time and one of those things is sewing.

This summer I finished a t-shirt quilt, which was my first and maybe only BIG sewing project. More on that later perhaps.  For now I wanted to share about two up-cycle projects I just did this week.

Up-Cycle
Think of up-cycling as taking something old and discarded and turning it into something new and exciting.

My first project was made out of an old sweater. I really liked the sweater when I bought it but it was one of those purchases that looked great in the store and then when you got it home and put it on the next day you had no idea why you would ever buy something so ridiculous looking.

 Well, needless to say as much as I loved the design on the sweater I never once wore it in public. I cut it up one day to use the pieces for something else and then it just got shoved into the scrap box. I re-discovered it and decided to turn the sleeves into a scarf. I sadly did not take any pictures of the sweater beforehand but below is the finished product.

I looped the sleeves together and then ran a strip of elastic down the center to make it bunchy. I attached the ends together to make it a loop and voila...an infinity scarf.

I am excited to finally get some use out of that sweater I bought about 5 years ago.






My next project was converting an old pair of pants into a crochet hook organizer. I made a different hook organizer about a year ago when I became inspired to get organized in the craft department. I'm pretty sure that venture will be a life-long process, but in the meantime I did, at the very least, get my crochet hooks organized.

From This...

To This!

There were a few things I didn't like about my first attempt. There were not enough pockets, the hook spaces were the wrong size and the sewing was less than an amateur attempt.

So, when I found the old pair of pants in the scrap bin I knew exactly what I would make.

I also made a plan this time...utilizing the amazing sewing skills my mother-in-law had shared with me during the t-shirt quilting.

After about four and a half hours of stitching, ironing, folding, un-stitching, re-ironing, staring into space thinking about which way different seams should line up...I had a new crochet hook organizer!

The best thing about both of these projects is that they are custom made and they were essentially free since I used materials I already owned.

I hope this inspires you to find that old sweater, bookshelf, flower pot, or pair of pants and turn it into something new and exciting!

Thanks for reading!

Jessi