These two goals are the subjects of my recent work at MSN Money and Get Rich Slowly — and they complement each other.
Get Rich Slowly
Cindy Brick, where are you?
The winner of last week’s prize, a copy of “Your Money: The Missing Manual,” is Cindy Brick. Or will be, if I hear back from her by Monday night.
Your money: The missing manual.
Thanks to all who left comments here and on the Facebook page or e-mailed after my daughter lost her baby. Your expressions of sympathy and support were much appreciated during this sad time in our family’s life.
To get back on track, I decided I’d better keep my giveaway streak alive. Up this week is a copy of J.D. Roth’s “Your Money: The Missing Manual.”
Strategic pizza.
Last month I was fried extra-crispy: too many things to do in too little time before I left for a seven-week trip to Alaska. Will Chen over at Wise Bread did a telephone intervention, i.e., I sort of melted down while he was on the line.
Bless his heart – he didn’t start to make bad-cell-reception noises and say that he couldn’t hear me so we’d have to talk some other time. (Like, um, never.) Instead, he listened to me whirl and howl about so many things I wanted to do, so few days until my plane left, so many professional plans but no time in which to bring them to fruition.
Then he gently encouraged me to think about how I’m spending my time.
Game shows, rescued pennies, bonus Swagbucks and how to have a cheaper Christmas 2011.
Today’s post is a bit of a grab-bag.
To anyone interested in joining Swagbucks: I might be able to get you 100 extra points. On Saturday evening I took part in an online chat about shopping/rewards sites. Those “attending” were given a code to offer to new referrals in addition to the usual 30-point sign-up bonus.
When a splurge is not a splurge.
In my most recent Get Rich Slowly column, I offer five tactics to keep from spending money — but I also offer permission to spend.
Heading home, and planning to stay there.
I’m so tired. Madeline Kahn said it much more melodically as Lili von Schtupp in “Blazing Saddles,” but all I can do is say it outright.
I’d planned to stay in New York City (at a hostel, of course) for several days after SaveUp 2011. But I cut the trip short when I realized that I was dangerously tired.
Can’t-remember-things tired. Bumping-into-stuff tired. Tired past the point where sleep rests me. My brain feels like a glacier: cold and sluggish and with chunks calving off.
Lately I’ve felt unable to do what I consider good work on Surviving and Thriving. It’s taken everything I’ve got just to meet deadlines for the other three sites for which I write.
In fact, some days I feel like crying when I sit down at the computer. Not a good sign.
Scenes from the Financial Blogger Conference. (Now with more Klingons!)
I got mugged on my way to the first-ever Financial Blogger Conference last week. Fortunately that was not a portent. Can’t remember when I’ve had so much fun.
The robbery occurred in downtown Seattle, as I took the escalator to the light rail tunnel. A trio of young knuckleheads, one of them quite physically imposing, were involved. It took three of them to take down a tired middle-aged woman. Some heroes, huh?
They got a little over $80 in cash and that by the time I got Citibank on the phone they’d already bought themselves sandwiches.
Suffice it also to say that I hope all three of them get bleeding piles.
Don’t talk to insurance adjusters. Do get free money from banks.
I’ve got new articles up at both my day jobs, in which I counsel how to get bonus bucks from banks and how to protect yourself in the aftermath of a car accident.
An update on payday lending.
Remember my previous post about money-lending? Here’s an update — and it isn’t pretty.