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From Frugal Simplicity.
Have a plan for ham
photo by Tama Leaver
DEAR SARA: I made a ham and just froze the bone and some ham for soup later, but what can I do with the drippings? Seems a shame to waste them. I’ve never done anything with ham drippings. At the very least, I could make some suet for the birdies. Any other suggestions? Could I perhaps use them to make soup broth? — Leslie, Illinois
DEAR LESLIE: You can use the drippings to make ham gravy. Tastes great with mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes. Or use the ham drippings when you make beans, such as dried navy beans or green beans. Yes, you can use it for soup, such as baked-potato, split-pea or black-bean soup. Visit www.mrdata.com/~benwbrum/lensflare/recipies/ham.html for a ham plan.
DEAR SARA: My apartment has one large room that I use as the living room and my bedroom. I don’t have a couch yet to separate the space a bit. How about some ideas on how to give my bedroom more privacy? I thought about a screen, but they are so expensive. Thanks! — B.N., Canada
DEAR B.N.: You can use bookcases and floor and hanging plants; hang sheer curtains or beaded or bamboo curtains; hinge together louvered folding doors, curtain cables or a rail from Ikea (the rail would allow you to slide it open or closed); or use a wooden garden trellis to divide the room.
DEAR SARA: I need to get glasses ASAP. I keep missing my teacup, putting the spoon beside instead of inside the cup. I’m getting nervous about driving. I need a place that is good and inexpensive. I’ve looked online and found America’s Best. They have an eye exam and two pairs of glasses for $69. I also looked at Wal-Mart’s site, but they don’t give prices. I’m unsure which way to go here. Price is important, as is quality of exam and frames. I have no more then $100 for both the exam and glasses. Any suggestions? — Polly, Pennsylvania
DEAR POLLY: America’s Best seems hard to beat. You can price compare an eye exam and get the prescription to take elsewhere, such as Zenni Optical (zennioptical.com) or 39 Dollar Glasses (39dollarglasses.com). You didn’t mention your financial situation, but you can also look into Vision USA (www.aoa.org/visionusa.xml). According to the Web site, the general eligibility requirements vary by state.
To receive free services, you must:
– Have a job or live in a household where there is one working member.
– Have no vision insurance (this may include Medicare/Medicaid).
– Have income below an established level based on household size.
– Not have had an eye exam within two years.
The following Web address won’t help you specifically because there aren’t any listings for Pennsylvania, but it might help others. To view state listings of organizations that can help with free eye exams, visit www.neweyesfortheneedy.org/us/freeexams_states.html.
Other organizations that can help include the Lions Club (www.lionsclubs.org), One Sight (www.onesight.org) and Eye Care America (www.eyecareamerica.org).
Continue reading Have a plan for ham …
From Frugal Village.
Review: Snap Judgment
Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a book of interest.
Over the last few years, I’ve come to believe that the biggest key to personal finance success is controlling your own psychology and impulses.
Our entire lives are filled with quick decisions we must constantly make – and, for the most part, we’re good at it. We commute to work without getting in an accident. We make constant little decisions at work – and at home, too. We’re able to effectively take several pieces of information, combine them together, and make a pretty good choice based on the result – and we do it over and over again.
Unfortunately, that same ability often doesn’t serve us well at all when it comes to personal finance. The ultra-quick decision making process that leads us to making great little choices in everyday life often leads us to making disastrous financial decisions. Very rarely do snap decisions work out well in the financial world.
This concept is the central focus of Snap Judgment by David Adler. He makes a two-fold argument. First, such snap decisions fail us financially and, if we’re able to get control over them, we’re much more likely to find financial success. Second, understanding how people make such snap decisions can help us to predict and prepare for the choices that other people will make, pushing us to further success.
Sound interesting? Let’s dig in.
I: The Psychology of Financial Decisions
The basic rule of thumb for success in any financial arena is “buy low and sell high.” It rings true in everything from stock investing to grocery shopping. The problem is that most of our normal financial cues tell us to do virtually anything but that. For example, we often believe there must be value to be found if everyone else is buying something, but quite often that means that it’s the opposite of a bargain – the price is overinflated.
Similarly, we are often wired to overlook what we view to be small amounts of risk – if we didn’t, we’d never leave our house in the morning. However, when we apply the same philosophy to investing, we overlook those seemingly small risks and chase what looks like the biggest returns – and then we get bitten by those risks. That’s why so many people got caught losing big chunks of their retirement in 2008?
II: The Track, the Stock Market, and Other Types of Gambling
Our brains are wired to see patterns in our lives, from traffic to grocery shopping to financial markets. Most of the time, when we act based on how we think things will go based on those patterns, we guess right.
The problem is that the stock market and most forms of gambling present false patterns to us, ones that have nothing to do with what happens next. People stare at charts and sit at slot machines because our minds are convinced there’s a pattern in the chaos and that a big winner is about to emerge. Quite often, though, it’s not coming down the pipe.
III: Personal Decisions, Personal Safety, Personal Finance, and Health Choices
Another method in which people falsely assess risk is in our own health and mortality. Many, many people don’t have life insurance because they simply see the risk of their own death as being too minute to really concern themselves with, whether in a conscious or subconscious way. For the same reason, many people don’t bother with annual checkups at the doctor.
In each case, the concern isn’t the chance of the risk, but the severity of the event when risk comes to call. We assess the chances themselves quite well, but we’re poor at assessing the consequences of the bad event actually occuring and whether or not a small cost now is worth covering that big bill later on.
The latter three sections of the book are much shorter and focus on very narrow issues, mostly ones that have really popped up as a result of the 2008 financial crisis.
IV: CEO Behavior
CEOs rise to the top of the corporate ladder by taking risks and having those risks pay off. That’s how a future CEO stands out from the pack – they stick their neck out and succeed. When they get to the top, they often have huge confidence in their abilities, whether it’s warranted (Jack Welch) or not (Bob Nardelli). Often, one sign that a company is either going to succeed wildly or utterly fail is in the behavior of the CEO: are they full of their own hubris? Do they hold onto stock options too long? Good signs include a laserlike focus on their company. Bad signs include self-promotion, like writing books and going on book tours.
V: Psychology and the Credit Crisis
Investment bubbles happen for the reasons outlined above: people see others rushing in and making good money and decide to rush in themselves. Inevitably, though, any market eventually runs out of buyers, at which point the bubble pops and people lose big. The opposite is also true – think of someone shouting “fire” in a theater or a bank run. Quite often, that kind of trampling panic can cause far more damage than is warranted in the situation.
VI: Debiasing
How can you avoid all of this stuff? First of all, slow down. Very few financial decisions have to be made in a “snap” context. Second, communicate. Talk it over with others. Have a “money buddy” or even a group of people to talk decisions through with. Third, cover your risks. Don’t invest in stocks unless you can afford the losses and have insurance unless you’ll be fine without it.
Is Snap Judgment Worth Reading?
Snap Judgment is a thorough and interesting review of how psychology affects investment and financial choices. It’s written approachably and thoughtfully and does a good job of covering the 2008 crisis in the latter sections of the book.
The only real drawback with the book is that the topic area has been covered by a lot of other books, many of which are very, very similar.
If you’ve read a book on financial psychology, Snap Judgment probably isn’t a necessary read, but if you’ve never read one, you ought to, and Snap Judgment is a pretty fine place to start.
Continue reading Review: Snap Judgment …
From The Simple Dollar.
Getting Good
Samuel writes in:
Much like you with your piano resolution, I decided to finally bite the bullet and begin a career path towards becoming a professional chef this year. I have a substantial amount of money saved up, so the costs of this choice aren’t a problem.
My problem is this: it’s a lot more of a slog than I ever dreamed it would be. I am attending culinary school in the fall, but for now I went to a few of the best restaurants in my city and asked if I could apprentice for free in their kitchen. I found a position that blew my mind at first, but for the last three weeks all I have done is chop vegetables. It’s incredibly boring and it’s actually making me enjoy this less and less. I’m afraid that by the time I actually get to culinary school, I’m going to hate this entire idea.
Do you have any advice or thoughts?
Two words: deliberate practice.
The advantage of spending hours and hours chopping vegetables now is that later on, when you’re preparing complex dishes, the act of chopping the vegetables is so efficient and effortless for you that you can chop the vegetables perfectly while focusing mentally on other tasks that need to be done.
I actually think this is a brilliant way to train for an aspiring chef. This training is grinding a particular skill into you to the point that it becomes truly second nature. That particular skill is one that you will use virtually every day as a chef, either in the home or in a restaurant.
It’s the concept of deliberate practice at work. Deliberate practice is practice that is specific and technique-oriented, is highly repetitive, and is paired with immediate feeback – in other words, the exact kind of practice you’re getting in that kitchen right now.
Why is deliberate practice so good? For one, it forces you to master a very specific skill in an intimate way. Often, that specific skill is an element of the larger skill you want to learn. For two, the mastery of that very specific skill often prepares you well to learn other specific skills – slicing meat, for instance. For three, that highly trained skill will make the broader tasks that much easier, meaning that excelling at one narrow thing can often improve your overall skill level, much like a tent pole with a tent.
Think of The Karate Kid, where Daniel is washing and waxing cars and painting walls. It was boring and it seemed completely un-fun to Daniel, but when he actually attempted basic karate, those skills he had deliberately practiced came to the surface, making him much, much better than he would have ever been without them.
I’m actually using deliberate practice in my own piano learning. Rather than continually pushing myself to play harder and harder material, I’m instead playing some simple songs with a few key techniques over and over and over again. I’ll play the same line in repetition for an hour. Yes, at times it can be boring, but when I do try something more complex, I see that specific learned skill shining through when I do things like switch chords or jump an octave.
If you want to learn to do something well, deliberate practice should absolutely be a part of your practicing repertoire. Sure, it might be really boring at times, but when you attempt the broader task and feel the training of deliberate practice come through for you, it’s an exciting and empowering thing.
Samuel, go home tonight and throw yourself together a vegetable stir fry, just like you might have done before the start of the year. Notice how it just all comes together that much easier than before. That’s what you’re learning – instead of focusing on the mechanics of vegetable chopping, instead you’re focusing on the meal itself. That focus is at a higher level because you have a lot of practice at the lower level skill – and the end result is a much better meal that seems to come together easier.
Continue reading Getting Good …
From The Simple Dollar.
Paper Flowers: 35 How-To Instructions & Templates
Here’s a lovely assortment of paper flowers to make, I’ve organized them in a few sections for easier browsing: Bouquets & Centerpieces, Tissue Paper, Crepe Paper, Origami Paper and the rest under general tutorials. Many of these have free templates to download and most are surprisingly easy to make! Just click the picture to visit [...]
- Also See These Tips:
- How To Make Crepe Paper Flowers: {Fundamentals}
- Seed Packet Printables & Templates {Free}
- DIY Pom-Pom Lamp: Tutorial
Continue reading Paper Flowers: 35 How-To Instructions & Templates …
From TipNut.com.
Prioritize: Last Week
Photo Credit: Erin Joyce
Continue reading Prioritize: Last Week …
From Econobusters.
Do You Really Save Money if you Purchase Items in Bulk?
With the continued cost of various items in our society the concept of buying in bulk is getting to be more common that ever. Yet many people question if they are really saving money or not. The answer to this question that yes you will save money when you purchase the right items in bulk. [...]
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From Frugal Simplicity.
Take the Vacation You Want Without Paying a Fortune
The majority of us live a very fast paced lifestyle that involves more things to get done than we really have time for. As a result, it is ourselves that we don’t fully take care of. Planning a vacation is a great way to reward yourself for your hard work as well as have some [...]
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From Frugal Simplicity.
Bargain Time! 500 Premium Business Cards for Just $5
Bargain Time! 500 Premium Business Cards for Just $5
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From Frugal Simplicity.
Free Groceries for a Year: Grocery Sweeps
Enter The $500 Monthly Grocery Sweeps and you could save $500 per month off your grocery bill for a year! Enter to win $500 per month towards your grocery bill – for an entire year! Since the average family’s grocery bill is $6000 per year, that’s like getting free groceries for a year. Enter [...]
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From Frugal Simplicity.